The geography of well-being is a current of geographical thought within human geography that addresses the issue of social welfare as an object of this science and focuses on the real and everyday problems of society. It was born at the end of the 1960s from a liberal current arising from radical geography, trying to improve society within the same system. It has an applied character and its ultimate goal is the achievement of guidelines for the transformation of society and obtaining a better quality of life.
In the 1960s, there was an interest in social issues and the distribution of wealth to which Geography is not insensitive, given that research related to this subject already existed (economic contrasts, living standards, etc.) . As David Smith points out:
[...] human geographers, like other scholars, are children of their time and react in accordance with the intellectual, social and political climate in which they live.
There was an effort to relate spatial p to social welfare indicators. Beginning in the early 1970s, work related to social welfare began to emerge. The geography of well-being does not renounce the use of complex research techniques such as simulations or factorial analysis, representative of theoretical-quantitative geography, but it is emphasized that these methodological tools must be used for the clarification of social problems such as the deterioration of the environment or economic and social contrasts. However, those qualitative aspects over quantitative ones will be more important.
In short, the geography of well-being answers the questions, who? (the population investigated), what? (what gives welfare to the population), where? (the location of problems within the study space) and how? (the process or causal mechanism that intervenes in society). Bibliography
wiki
